KEY POINTS:
American special forces soldiers could soon be wearing smart fabrics -- developed in New Zealand -- that monitor how they cope during combat situations, says an Auckland technology company.
The fabric gathers information on heart beat, skin temperature, posture, activity and breathing rate when against the skin.
The textiles were developed by Auckland company Zephyr Technology Ltd and have just been shown off at a hi-tech European trade fair, Cebit, the BBC reported.
The Cebit telecoms, computers and electronics trade fair in the northern German city of Hanover is a showcase of the visionary and the strange each March.
Zephyr, started in 2003, has two million of its 3.3 million shares held by Brian and Nicole Russell, of Papakura, and the rest are controlled by a venture capital company, iGlobe Treasury Management (NZ) Ltd. Mr Russell is the Mt Wellington company's chief executive.
The fabric could also be used by athletes to hone their performance by measuring how they react in training, according to Zephyr, which showcased two of its patented products -- a bio-harness and a "shoe pod" at the fair.
The bio-harness (a length of fabric worn around the chest) and the shoe pod (a smart insole) are both made of a patented textile that has the sensors woven into it. Once paired with electronics to store and broadcast data, this fabric can record physiological information.
The fabric gathers information on heart rate and skin temperature, and could equally well be used to gather information on top athletes as they train.
Steven Small, director of business development for Zephyr, told the BBC the company expected the products to find a role in the health, defence and medical markets.
Already, he said, Zephyr had signed a deal with the US Department of Defence to provide some of its special forces with the bioharness.
Mr Small said the device would enable officers to see the physiological state of their soldiers.
He said the work that Zephyr had done on the fabric had taken it out of the laboratory and enabled it to be put to much more practical use.
"All these tools exist today but only in laboratories, which would mean they hook you up to wires to measure you," he said. "With our tools, the doctor gives them to you and you go away and use them for a week."
The bioharness could also be used on subjects undergoing drug tests to see how their body reacts to a new medicine.
The New Zealand devices on show at Cebit could either record a week's worth of data or transmit data as it is gathered to a nearby laptop. The smart insole, or "shoe pod", could be used to train runners, said Mr Small.
The shoe pod can measure the size of a person's step to see where they place the most pressure and can also look at such parameters as where they push off from and how fast their foot hits the ground.
"It could be a great coaching tool for sprinters," he said.
The smart insole might also prove useful for those recovering from serious operations to replace a knee or hip, as it could measure how a person's gait changes before and after the procedure.
Either of the devices could also prove popular with amateur athletes keen to measure how they perform on their regular run.
The next step would be to use a computer language to connect it to a cellphone, and the internet, so that athletes could look up their performance stats at home or even on a cellphone downloading from their website.
Mr Small said the bioharness was being used by some of the keen runners among Zephyr staff.
"It's created quite a competition because they can go to the website and measure their progress against everyone else," he said.
- NZPA
